Sonic Forces (+ Episode Shadow)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Sonic Forces.

The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has had its ups and downs over the years, including a rocky transition to 3D, but nevertheless remained popular and profitable. To commemorate the franchise’s 25th anniversary, Sega announced Sonic Forces in 2016, which released the following year in 2017 and notably featured character customization. I had pre-ordered it at the time, mainly for the Persona 5-related DLC that came with it, and felt that the game was lacking at its initial $40 price point. Now, nearly two-and-a-half years later with a full replay of the game, my original opinion hasn’t changed all that much.

Sonic arrives in a city to stop an attack from Doctor Eggman, but is stopped by Infinite, a being who uses the power of the Phantom Ruby. Infinite defeats Sonic and takes him prisoner, allowing Eggman to finally take over the world. Six months later, a resistance group, spearheaded by Knuckles, is formed in an attempt to rescue Sonic and free the world from Eggman’s control. To that end, they recruit a survivor of Eggman’s attack, the player’s Avatar, whom they nickname the Rookie.

Infinite uses the power of the Phantom Ruby. 

Right from the beginning, the story is a complete mess. The premise of Eggman finally accomplishing his goal is intriguing, but occurs entirely offscreen and the full scope of the damage he’s done isn’t explored very deeply. Then there’s the fact that Sonic is supposedly tortured by Eggman for six months and yet seems completely unfazed by it when he makes his inevitable escape. Speaking of Sonic, every character that isn’t him doesn’t contribute anything to the main plot and Tails is reduced to a whining coward despite showing his own level of competence in prior games.

The story also suffers from overambition in spite of its many good ideas. Infinite’s first appearance also comes with the promise of fighting four popular villains: Metal Sonic, Chaos, Shadow and Zavok. However, of those four, only Zavok and Metal Sonic have proper boss fights, Chaos doesn’t put up a fight and mostly disappears from the story and Shadow is defeated in a cutscene that reveals that those villains were actually constructs created by Infinite. Classic Sonic makes a return from Sonic Generations, but despite dealing heavily with the Phantom Ruby in Sonic Mania, he’s the only playable character that doesn’t get a fight with Infinite and also, unfortunately, doesn’t contribute as much to the story as Modern Sonic. In a baffling move, despite referencing the events of Sonic Generations, Classic Sonic's origin is also retconned; instead of being Sonic's past self, as in Sonic Generations, he is now from another dimension.

A monument to wasted opportunity;
L-R: Shadow the Hedgehog, Metal Sonic, Chaos, Zavok

Of course, the story also suffers from pacing issues, as it goes too fast and doesn’t allow any moments to breathe. This ties into another missed opportunity in the form of Null Space, a dimension of nothingness. While Sonic and the Avatar are both sent there in a dramatic cutscene, their inevitable escape doesn’t get fleshed out in its own level and they instead manage to break out in the opening seconds of the next level.

This brings me to the level design, which is rather hit and miss. There are 30 levels to play through, split between playing as Classic Sonic, Modern Sonic and the Avatar. On paper, this allows for a good mixture of gameplay styles to keep things interesting and allow players to see parts of the story from different perspectives. While they mostly accomplish this in practice, there are issues that can’t be overlooked.

To give credit where it’s due, the Modern Sonic levels do an excellent job of capturing the character’s speed, for the most part, and the Avatar levels are designed well around getting to the goal while minimizing combat sections that could otherwise slow down the rhythm of play. Levels often have hidden alternate paths that can reward players with faster level completion and different stages have their own gimmicks to help keep things interesting. For instance, one of the more impressive stages involves controlling the Avatar through a city while Infinite occasionally alters gravity to change how the environment is interacted with.

That said, a number of levels are rather lackluster. While past Sonic games have required thoughtful platforming, the amount of precision required in some of the side-scrolling stages in this game can require an unreasonable amount of it, with plenty of bottomless pits to knock you back to the last checkpoint if you make even a small mistake. Some of the 3D levels can also require some unexpected level of precision, like needing to stay in the dead center of a path while moving fast in order to hit a ramp, or too easily allow the player to fall off the stage. Two instances of this are Modern Sonic paths that can cause the player to go flying off the stage if they don’t slow down, as well as Aqua Road, where enemies floating by in the water can cause the player to unwittingly jump over the lip of the slide and fall to their death.

Aqua Road is one of the more annoying levels.

The boss fights are also somewhat lackluster. Some of them are actually pretty good, mainly the fight with Metal Sonic and the time the Avatar fights Infinite, but the rest are a bit too easy to beat, including the final boss of the game, which has highly telegraphed and easy to dodge attacks. The final time the player fights Infinite is especially a letdown, as it’s basically the Metal Sonic fight with a new coat of paint.

The biggest issue with the levels overall, however, is the fast pacing. Despite attempts at complexity, most levels can be completed in about two minutes or less, barring any unforeseen deaths. Avatar levels also have access to Wispons; these are equipped beforehand and can grant special abilities depending on the player’s playstyle. While this does offer some degree of customization in the gameplay, it’s possible, with the right Wispon, to skip a lot of the game’s platforming, trivializing any difficulty they may have presented.

Wispons provide a significant power boost to Avatars.

Of course, the most well-known feature, and one of the better parts of the game, is the Avatar system, which allows players to create their own custom character. Avatars begin with a species, which has an actual effect on gameplay (ex. Wolves have a passive ring magnet ability). From there, you can customize various aspects of it, including individual pieces of clothing, color scheme and victory pose. Avatar pieces can be unlocked by completing missions within the game and meeting other conditions. Completing levels with the Avatar also raises his Honors, represented by medals, but these are mainly for decoration. The game encourages you to try and receive maximum Honors for every species, but I was only engaged long enough to do that for one.

The Avatar I used for my game, based on Joker from Persona 5.

What I can also more easily praise are the music and voice acting. The main theme, “Fist Bump”, written and performed by Douglass Robb of Hoobastank, fits the tone and themes of the game and is incorporated fairly well into instrumentations throughout the game. Returning voice actors reprise their roles pretty well, especially Mike Pollock as Doctor Eggman, and Liam O’Brien does well in his role of Infinite. As for Kirk Thornton, his performance as Shadow displays that by this point, he had become more comfortable in the role, which would continue into later appearances from the character.

On that note, around the same time Sonic Forces launched, the DLC Episode Shadow was released. This DLC serves as a prequel to the main story of Sonic Forces and allows players to play as Shadow the Hedgehog in a mainline Sonic title for the first time in years.

Episode Shadow sees Shadow trying to recover E-123 Omega one month before Eggman begins his takeover of the world. When he runs into Infinite, he’s also reminded of their first encounter three months before that.

The story of this DLC attempts to expand on Infinite’s backstory, but, although good in theory, it ends up being a massive letdown. Infinite’s past has some genuinely interesting ideas, like the fact that he’s a mercenary squad leader who would become an evil being, but his actual motivation boils down to being so thin-skinned that a passing comment from Shadow about his weakness drives him to give up his humanity to gain more power. As for the rest of the story, it gets a little muddy when constructs are used to explain what’s going on.

Gameplay-wise, Episode Shadow plays similarly to the Modern Sonic sections of the main game. Although the DLC attempts to introduce a higher level of difficulty than the base game, it’s still rather quick, with only three stages to its name, including a retread of Aqua Road. The other two levels are pretty well-designed, however, and I generally found the DLC good for a free add-on, even if it was a bit shorter than I would’ve liked.

Perhaps in an effort to make up for the length, Shadow also becomes playable in twelve Modern Sonic stages in the base game. While a welcome addition, it doesn’t change too much about the actual gameplay, with the most notable alteration that none of the voice clips associated with Sonic will play.

There’s also a free Super Sonic DLC that allows you to play as Super Sonic in several Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic stages. In this mode, either Sonic is able to transform into Super Sonic after collecting 50 rings, which grants infinite boost. However, Super Sonic slowly consumes rings, so the player should have a steady supply on hand. Apart from this, levels will play out as normal, only now it’s possible to complete them even faster. Additionally, players cannot participate in rankings.

One last thing about this game that's too funny not to mention has to do with the marketing. In Japan, Sonic Forces was promoted in a tie-in collaboration with Hooters of all places. Needless to say, fan artists had a field day with it.

Although it has a lot of good ideas, Sonic Forces is unfortunately one of the weaker Sonic the Hedgehog games. The fun Avatar system and some of the better moments can’t make up for the rushed story and gameplay or the more poorly designed levels. Considering the amount of content, and the fact that it's the starting point for the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comic, I’d say to pick it up if you can get it at a good discount or otherwise don’t bother at all.